Nostalgia wars are all the rage at the moment, but an extraordinary example appears to have been missed: a hammer and sickle painted on the newly erected statue of Lady Thatcher. Communism was in fact invented by the Greek comic poet Aristophanes (c. 446-386 bc). For him, it was one long, uproarious joke.
His Ecclesiazusae (‘Women Running The Assembly’) was produced in Athens in 391 bc. In it, he depicts the women of Athens disguising themselves with beards and taking total control of the male-dominated assembly. Their leaderene Praxagora then issues a programme of reform, which abolishes private property – land, goods, and money – and uses it to feed and clothe the whole citizen body, under female management. She also abolishes marriage, instantly destroying the whole Greek family and kinship system. Sex is to be communally available, but on one condition: any man desired by more than one woman has to give first dibs to the ugliest and/or oldest woman (who argue ferociously about who is uglier and older).
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